The woman hesitated. “Would you like to take a seat? You look pale.”
Diamond sank onto the sofa and clutched her hands in her lap. She longed to demand to speak to Bryce, but didn’t want to risk being thrown out of the store. “Can you help me? Give me your grandparents’ address?” If the woman wouldn’t cooperate, she would check the city directory.
“My grandmother came in with me today. She’s in the back. Who should I tell her is calling?”
Should she use a fake name? Would Bryce or Anne have mentioned the reporter who dogged their steps in the twenty-first century? She decided against it. “Diamond Merrell.”
“Wait here.” The woman disappeared into the back of the store. She returned a few moments later. “Grandma will see you.” She led Diamond to an office where an older woman sat behind a desk piled with papers. She wore a purple gown trimmed with black braid and had pulled her gray hair back in a knot. Despite her age and time-worn features, she had excellent posture and a serene smile.
“You wished to see me, Miss Merrell? I must admit while your name sounds familiar, I don’t recall where we met.”
Diamond stared at the old woman. She shared Anne’s high cheekbones and there was something eerily similar in her smile, but she could not possibly be the same person. “Thank you for seeing me. I was hoping you could help me find Bryce Poole and Anne Rush.”
The old woman’s face lost color. “Who are you? What do you want from me?”
“My name is Diamond Merrell,” she repeated. Old people were often forgetful. “I only want to talk to Bryce and Anne. I mean them no harm.”
“I’m Anne Rush, but I haven’t used that name in years. Wherever did you hear it?”
“You’re Anne Rush? That’s impossible.” Diamond’s heart raced. “I just saw her a few weeks ago, and she was no more than thirty.”
The woman’s eyes grew wide. “You’re that reporter! I knew I recognized the name. You kept following us. You wouldn’t leave us alone, although we had done nothing wrong.”
How did she know this? “Did Anne tell you about me? You can’t be her. You’re old.” Fear held her in its grip and Diamond had no time for tact.
“I am old, for this time period. But late seventies is not so unusual in the twenty-first century.”
The twenty-first century. Diamond swallowed. Something was very wrong here. “It is you. I don’t understand. How could you age so much in a few weeks?” Is accelerated aging a side effect of time travel?
“A few weeks?” Old-woman Anne placed a hand behind her neck. “I’m as confused as you are. You ran towards us as we activated the stone. I suppose we caught you up in the vortex. But that was fifty years ago.”
If Anne hadn’t looked so frail, Diamond would have wanted to shake her. She had to be lying! Yet the proof was in her lined face and wrinkled hands. Diamond sucked air into her lungs, trying to stave off full-blown panic. Anne had said something about a stone. “You used a stone to travel through time? Please go get it and send me back. I can’t stay here in this war-torn country. I’m lucky to be alive.”
Anne took a deep breath. “We need to talk.”
Eleven
Chapter 11
Anne took charge. She sent a street urchin for her carriage, told her granddaughter to watch the shop and sent a message to her husband to meet them at home. She might have aged fifty years since Diamond had last seen her, but she still had the same energy. Now, however, she appeared serene and full of purpose, unlike the haunted young woman Diamond had confronted that night at McDonald’s. Life in the past, harsh as it was, suited her.
“I go by Arianne, now,” Anne told her as they waited for her driver. “Arianne Poole. Bryce and I married shortly after you last saw me.”
They had stayed together. Diamond recalled how close they had been, how she’d felt a tinge of envy. Some couples really did make it. “And your little girl? Is she still a child or is she a woman in her fifties?”
“She’s fully grown,” Arianne said, her eyes shadowed.
A horse-drawn carriage pulled up in front of the store and Diamond climbed in after Arianne. She wondered if Jesse was watching. She would have to meet him back at the hotel.
The Pooles’ carriage was elegant and luxurious. The mud splashed exterior gave way to a clean and shiny interior with soft and supple leather seats. The carriage rocked gently as they set out, but it was almost as comfortable as riding in a car. Much slower, but not arduous. Diamond gazed out the window. They passed stores and restaurants, maneuvering around other carriages, wagons, people on horseback and even reckless pedestrians darting through the traffic.
She was so busy taking in her surroundings, it took her a while to realize that Arianne was studying her just as intently. “Everything must seem strange to you.”
“I’ve had some time to adjust, but at first I thought I’d stumbled upon a reenactment group so concerned about accuracy they bordered on a cult.”
“Soldiers captured you?”
“No, but I witnessed part of a battle—the fall of Island #10.”
“You’ve only been here for a few weeks?”
“Yes. I don’t understand why you’ve aged and I haven’t.”
“Bryce and I returned to 1812. It seems the stone brought you to 1862.”
She kept mentioning a stone. A stone that could transport people through time? It seemed crazy, but nothing had been normal since she came to in that clearing.
The carriage drew up to an elegant three-story house nestled on a long narrow lot between two similar houses. It seemed the Pooles had done well for themselves. Diamond exited the carriage and followed Arianne up the brick sidewalk to the door. A maid met
